Tag Archives: lighting

Excitement,…Adventure,…Toy Theatre!!!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Do not try this at home.

Do it yourself music recording

Yes, Ladies and Gents, the moment you have all been waiting for has finally arrived,……The new blog post telling you all the latest about our Hansel & Gretel Liquorice theatre show has arrived!

As with Collette and Tim’s previous “meetings” tempers got pretty frayed over the editing of Tim’s lovingly crafted script.  Tim wanted to keep all his lovely dialogue and subtle tones and Collette wanted everything to be shorter and more obvious.  Tim wanted gritty realism, Collette wanted fairytale magic and emotion.

There was another interesting aspect to Tim’s script which I would like to open up for discussion.  As I mentioned in my previous post, the main reason we know the witch in the story is a witch, is because the story teller tells us so, and because she likes to eat children and she lives in an unusual house.  She doesn’t do anything magic at all.

Now, in Tim’s script, he has deliberately not mentioned the word “witch”.  The character is simply referred to by the children as “the old lady”.  Now I am not sure how I feel about this.  I was very keen for her to seem sweet and innocent to begin with, but if after she starts behaving horribly towards the children, she is a “normal” person who chooses to behave in this dreadful way, what impression would that give the audience?  Would it be a lot nastier and more scary if it is a horrible badly behaved old woman who gets pushed in the oven by Gretel?  Is this going to promote capital punishment and taking the law into our own hands?  If she is a witch, does it make it slightly better because she is a magical being of some sort and part of the whole “not to be taken seriously” allegorical nature of the fairytale?

Those who remember “Spitting Image” will know, that there is a lot one can get away with subject matter wise simply by using puppets to do it.  Puppets are not realistic, they can say what they want and they are only puppets, (the fact that a human being is actually putting words into their mouth is something you can get away with).  It is similar with “The Simpsons”.  Because it is a cartoon the format lets the makers of the show deal with challenging subject matter and no-one bats an eyelid.  Despite the fact that it is obviously a show with adult content, many parents let their kids watch it because it is a cartoon.  I would like my show to be scary, but at a suitable level for young children.  On the other hand, one doesn’t want to cater to the scaredy cat little kid too much.

On one occasion when I was putting on a show in a school; we had not brought out any puppets, we hadn’t said anything and my co-performer and I came on and were just about to start speaking when a girl collapsed into terrified tears and had to be taken out.  We were honestly not alarming in appearance, and I can only think it was the shock of us being real people who were actually there, rather than being safely behind a television screen.  I think the 2-d figures of the toy theatre may do a lot to mitigate any realism in the script as they are very obviously not real.

We have also made a start on the music.  I have been having much fun playing with keyboards, drum machines, actual drums, tin whistles etc. and recording stuff into the computer.  This is the very first time that we are using recorded music for a show.  This is for practical reasons as we will have far too much to do with the scenery and characters to be playing live music too.  Having said that, I am using live type instruments and sound effects and recording them into the computer – they will be transferred to an mp3 player and then played through a very useful pa system of modest proportions as and when necessary.  We are using a very useful piece of free software called “Audacity” and it is a lot of fun finding out how to edit music in this way.

So the next jobs are – mocking up sets and puppets, creating a lighting plan and finishing off the music.  In the meanwhile why not leave your comments or vote in my poll about the “witch” issue mentioned previously.  Watch this space for more news, coming some time next week!

Things Start to Happen….

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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In the forgotten backwaters of the North of England, in a place where the postal service doesn’t know if it’s in Lancashire or North Yorkshire, a place that is on a ley line, where the most interesting landmarks are “The Big Stone” and “The Painted Bus Shelter”; a married couple are arguing loudly in a house where the bedrooms are downstairs and the living rooms upstairs.  The place is High Bentham and the couple are Collette Knowles and Timothy Austin.

“What are they arguing about?” I hear you ask.  “Is their marriage on the rocks?”  No, dear reader, do not fear.  The surprisingly extreme altercation is on the subject of Rough Magic Theatre’s new toy theatre project, “Hansel & Gretel”.

It might be a surprise to those who are not familiar with the creation of puppet, or indeed toy theatre shows to hear that there are such tempestuous forces at work behind the scenes.  To those people I say, “This is theatre darling, great theatre!  And it must be the best!”  At least I intend for it to be as good as we can possibly get it within our limitations.

I have read about George & Ann Neff’s “Adventures in Toy Theatre Production” in V.16, no.7 of The Puppet Master, that marvellous publication produced by the BPMTG.  From this I have learned that it can be a mistake to bite off more than you can chew, (hope they won’t mind my saying that – that was kind of the point of the article).

Thinking about all the possibilities, though is quite exciting and I see no harm in aiming high.  We may not have done this before, and there are many out there who know a lot and will be more knowledgeable and practiced than we are; but I have no doubt that we have our own individual skills and experience that will more than make up for this.  I intend for it to be as good a production as any of our others, (and considering how much I put into “Alice in Wonderland” that is saying something).

To cut a long story short, we have completed our first rough outline of the whole production – including exactly what puppets and scenery are involved, what lighting effects we want and what music and sound effects to include.

With regard to the lighting I felt it was best to work out what we want to achieve, (a kind of wish list) and then see if it is possible to achieve it, and how.  Like I said before, I feel it’s important to be aiming high and to revise things later if circumstances require it.

Now Harry Oudekerk, (the man behind the Vischmarkt Papierentheater Festival) kindly sent me some information relating to his own very clever lighting rig.  This involves red, green, blue LEDs and remote controls designed to program what colours you want to come out of cunningly mixing these three in different ways.

Now all this was largely gobbledygook to me but luckily for me, I know someone wise in the ways of LEDs.  This strange little place, High Bentham, does contain an extraordinary breadth of talent and experience and we are lucky to be a small town that contains a shopping high street where you can get absolutely everything, (if they don’t have it, they can get it usually).  Anyway, Iain Henshaw of S1B is our local theatrical lighting expert and he also knows a lot about LEDs and the different ways they can be used.  He explained Harry’s email so I could understand and also told me a lot of other stuff that I didn’t understand.  The long and short is, however, that we now have to put together our lighting wish list in a more comprehensible order and we will then have another meeting to work out the possibilities.

Coincidentally I also met a man who makes little LED lighting effects circuits for fun yesterday, ….(hmmmm!).

So my next jobs are mocking up all the sets and props, sorting out a lighting plan and Tim will be looking at the script!  Watch this space again everyone!  <cue anticipation music!>